Re: Auto-indexing

* Christopher Kings-Lynne <chriskl(at)familyhealth(dot)com(dot)au> [010206 18:29] wrote:
> Is it a feasible idea that PostgreSQL could detect when an index would be
> handy, and create it itself, or at least log that a table is being queried
> but the indices are not appropriate?
>
> I suggest this as it's a feature of most windows databases, and MySQL does
> it. I think it would be a great timesaver as we have hundreds of different
> queries, and it's a real pain to have to EXPLAIN them all, etc. Is that
> possible? Feasible?

Probably both, but if it's done there should be options to:

.) disable it completely or by table/database or even threshold or
disk free parameters (indicies can be large)
.) log any auto-created databases to inform the DBA.
.) if disabled optionally log when it would have created an index on
the fly. (suggest an index)
.) expire old and unused auto-created indecies.

Generally Postgresql assumes the user knows what he's doing, but
it couldn't hurt too much to provide an option to have it assist
the user.

--
-Alfred Perlstein - [bright(at)wintelcom(dot)net|alfred(at)freebsd(dot)org]
"I have the heart of a child; I keep it in a jar on my desk."